Nothing In Between Me and Perfection
by Clementine Wind
Summary: Francis and Mary revisit their childhood together with a day at the lake in a modern AU. A journey from children to teenagers to adults, in which we discover that they are all three ages at once.


His eyes sparkled in the fading light that filtered through between the trees. He was so beautiful, so handsome. It was his eyes, or maybe his hair. It didn't matter. He was mine. I never got tired of hearing that. He was mine. His blue eyes and golden, curly hair that fell to his chin, they were mine.

"Well, are you coming?" He asked from farther up the path.

"I still have a few doubts about whatever this is you're going to show me," I said with a smile dancing on my lips.

"Just wait, Mary. I suppose that's not a fair request considering your patience, but we're almost there. It's all worth it. I promise."

"Well, I certainly hope that's true," I said, glancing down at my muddied boots and stretching my sore muscles.

Francis tossed his smile with those perfect lips. My lips to kiss. God, that never got old. I jogged up to him and grabbed his hands. "Let's go then," I said.

We ran through the forest, wreaking a havoc of sound with our laughter. It was just like when we were younger, with our fingers intertwined as we played. "Stop!" I cried, pulling my hand from his so that I could rest my hands on my knees. "Francis, I hope you brought a map because we are far, far away from any trail," I said as I regained my breath.

"Don't worry," Francis said. "I've been here before. I think I've taken you here before too, when we were younger. Remember?"

"Well I certainly don't recall this trek through the woods."

"I took you the back way, the other way has signs and such that truly just serve to spoil the surprise. Come, we're just a few steps away."

I took his outstretched hand, and I let him lead me forward. He pushed aside a throng of branches and held open the newly made gateway. I stepped through.

There, on the other side, was a lake surrounded by a field of tall grass. The sun glanced off the waves and turned the water silver. A bird floated surfaced from below the water for a brief moment just before ducking back down. The lake stretched far into the distance, but on the horizon I could pick out a road winding down to the lakeside. My memory sparked to life, and before me I saw two young children prancing through the tall grasses as they played.

The girl tucked herself down into the grasses and allowed the wind to cover the evidence of her presence. The boy peered over the grasses, his long, spindly legs allowing him to watch over the vast expanse. Today, however, his height would not give him an advantage.

"Mary?" he called out. "Mary? Are you here?"

The girl stayed quiet in her hiding place.

"Mary?"

She heard the soft brush of the grasses toward her, and she took an involuntary step back. She whipped her head around to see the grasses gently sway away from her. Against the motion of the wind.

The boy smiled as he spotted the disturbance. "Mary?" he said. "Mary, if you're here, stand up, show me where you are. Are you here, Mary?" His shouts masked the sound of the grasses rubbing against one another as he moved towards the spot where the girl crouched. "Are you here, Mary?" He was close now, too close for her not know that he was coming for her. She would make her move soon.

Like a bullet she sprang up from the grass and began sprinting away, towards the cover of the trees. Her legs pumped up and down, up and down, but he was faster, he was always faster than her. His legs pinwheeled about, striking a heartbeat into the dirt below the grasses. He reached his arms out, and suddenly she was in his arms.

The young girl cried out a surprised, "Francis!" as the boy tackled her. The pair tumbled into the dust. Dirt swirled in the air beside the girl. She coughed and propped herself up on her elbows. "Francis?" She stood up.

"Here," he called, dusting himself off.

She made her way over to his side. "God," she said, "you look awful."

He at her with her loose hair stumbling over her shoulders with a strand of grass sticking out of it, and he began to laugh. The girl giggled beside him. "Yes," the boy said. "I suppose I do."

Behind me, Francis stepped through into the clearing. He wrapped his strong arms around my waist and pulled me close to him. "Francis," I sighed into his shoulder. I turned to him, and watched my memory of the little boy melt into the man before me.

"Mary," he said before he leant down to kiss me. His lips were soft and gentle, but they burnt incessantly with a wanting echoed in my every heartbeat. My hand instinctively reached up to hold his face, and I gasped as he pulled me closer. "Mary," he said. "My Mary. Just Mary."

I leant my forehead against his, but could not bring me self to separate myself any farther from him. These centimeters between us were torture. "Francis, it's perfect. This is amazing."

He stole another kiss from my lips before saying, "I had hoped you would like it. This was my favorite place as a child. Come, I have another surprise for you." He grabbed my hand and pulled me through the grass toward the lake. The wind did not flow over the tops of the grass this day, so our progress was followed by a train of wildly wagging the dense grasses, Francis led me to a flat expanse of shorter grass by the lakeside.

"Oh, Francis," I said, words failing. Before me sat a picnic basket on a red checkered blanket just like when we would come here when we were young.

"I thought that we don't get enough time to be children. So," Francis said, unpacking the picnic basket, "I brought some juice boxes, fruit, and grilled cheese sandwiches. All, of course, prepared the way you like it."

"Plain and simple," I said with a smile on my face.

"I believe when you were a child your exact words were, 'nothing in between me and perfection'."

I smiled, an idea tickling at me. "Well, I still do like it that way. I like it that way very much." I tugged playfully at his jacket.

Francis cast a backwards glance at his picnic. "Such a shame to leave a good picnic… but I suppose it we can always come back to it. And," he said, swooping me up into his arms as I showered him with a fit of giggles, "we can always find perfection in other places."

This time when he kissed me, the passion was undisguised, and I allowed my own fervor to pour into him. His arms clutched me close to him, as if afraid to let me go. I draped one arm across his neck and hoisted myself up to get closer to him. My other hand filled itself with Francis' soft, golden curls and pushed him closer to me. I broke from him for a moment and whispered into his ear. "Lay me down."

Francis obliged, gently placing me on the bed of grasses. He hovered above me, smiling, with this look of content in his eyes. He stroked a free strand of black hair from my face. I stared at him. He was perfect, and he was mine. I rose up and met his lips. I pulled back, mischievous, and pulled at his jacket. Francis tore it off. I planted a kiss on his neck and my hands played at the hem of his shirt. Francis let out a quiet moan. I slid my hands under the cloth and held his body. He was so beautiful. I kissed his neck again, a little lower this time. My hands searched upwards. "Mary," he said.

"Shhh," I whispered into his ear. I kissed his neck once more, finally landing on his collarbone where his pulse beat under my lips.

"Mary," he said again, wanting, needing.

"Alright," I said and gave in to love.

We lay in afterglow under the stars. I nestled myself into his shoulder with his arm around me, playing with my hair. The night was warm, but I coveted Francis' heat as a reminder that he was there next to me, as a promise that he always would be.

He pressed a kiss into my hair. "This is heaven. This is where my home is, always next to you. This is where I belong. The stars shining down on us and a breeze sweeping us clean. The sound of water lapping at the shore and you in my arms. This is where I always want to be."

I turned to face him and kissed his side. I stared into his eyes. They reflected the stars into my own eyes, and I could feel the wind in the way he traced his fingers across my ribcage. I listened to the sound of his steady, rhythmic breathing, and across my body I felt the heat from his skin. "This is where I want to be too. You are my home." I reached up and traced the edge of his face. He shivered against me. "Oh, Francis, you're cold."

"No," he said smiling at me, "I'm just a fool in love."

I smiled back at him. "Nonetheless," I said, "it will be getting a little colder. We should warm ourselves. I'll grab our clothes and the blanket."

"Leave the clothes," Francis said as I pulled myself from his embrace. "It won't be too cold, and I don't want to lose this moment, seeing you like this, so beautiful." He smiled. "I don't want anything in between me and perfection."

"Alright," I said, planting a kiss on his forehead. "I'll leave perfection untainted."

I reached the picnic site and pulled the blanket from underneath the basket. After shaking it out, I brought it back Francis.

He was staring up at the heavens, his complexion so loving and pure that I could not help but think back to the young boy I once knew. My memory fizzled him into existence. He ran, holding the hand of a young, black haired girl, into the woods as their laughter trailed behind them.

I knelt down and draped the blanket over Francis' body before lifting it back up so that I could crawl down to lay next to him. "Tell me what you're thinking of," I asked.

His words were slow in coming. For a time there was but the wind and the rustle of the grasses, but I knew better than to press him. The words would come, and he would say what he needed to say. "I came here after you moved away. I came here every time I could slip away. I thought that being where we had been, I thought that that would help ease the pain. I thought that I could be with you even while you were away." The pain in his words stabbed through me.

"Oh, Francis," I said.

"I thought that by seeing where I had seen you, that that would have helped me to understand why you had to leave. That I could find solace, a place in which to remedy my heart. Do you remember that spot by the lake, where the picnic was, that was where we first kissed. It was on the eve of your eleventh birthday. We were just children, we didn't know what it meant. But I loved you then, that day on the lakeside. I didn't know it, but I loved you. Our love was young, but it was raw and it was pure. And when your father died and your mother moved you away, it tore a piece of me away too because you were a part of me. And then I was thirteen looking at the lake and wondering how I could go on after you had gone. I didn't know what to do. I would come here and sit by the lake, staring at the spot we once loved. I tried to hold the shards of the past, but the tighter I held them, the more they cut. I never wanted to let you go. I never wanted to let you go."

A dam inside me broke. The memories of those days came flooding back. They had seemed to be so dark then. When my mother told me of how she intended to take me away, back to Scotland so that she could be with the rest of her family, how she intended to take me away from Francis, I had yelled at her. I had screamed at her to regain her senses. To not take me from my home. I don't think I knew what I had meant by that. Not yet. And then when we had taken the boat to the green hills of Scotland, I too felt something pulling me back to France. I knew Francis' words, and I knew what they meant because I too and felt what he had felt.

A tear leaked down my face.

"Mary," he said, cradling my head. "My Mary. Just Mary."

"Francis," I choked out. I looked up at him and found tears of his own spilling down his cheeks. I couldn't find the words to say more. I wrapped my arms around his chest and pulled him close to me. "Francis," I said again.

"Shhh. I'm here." He said, rocking me back and forth. "I'm here."

"I'm never going to let you go again," I said to him. "Never."

Together we grieved for the years we had lost. Suddenly I knew what had brought him to this memory, and what had finally brought him out of his pain all those years ago. It was the same thing that had brought me from mine. It was the stars. Knowing that somewhere, so many miles apart from me, Francis was sitting by a lakeside, staring up at the same stars as I was, and that he was thinking of me. Even now, the stars spun their old webs as they journeyed across the sky.

Some say that stars are stoic, cold. I disagree. Stars know our fondest wishes and our deepest secrets. They watch over us from when we are young. And when we are so desperately alone, it is the stars that come out and drape themselves across our shoulders like a blanket. It is the stars that remind us that we are not quite as forgotten as we might imagine ourselves to be. It is the stars that come out in the dead of night to comfort us, to rouse us from the depths of our despair, and to deliver unto us the courage to face another day. It is the stars that bridge the gap of one thousand miles. It is the stars that connect us to one another, even when we are so convinced that we are apart. These stars, they are stars of survival, but they are also stars of hope and stars of promise. These stars promise of a better day.


End file.
